Dear President Jayathi Murthy, Provost Edward Feser, Brent Gustafson, Heather Horn, and OSU Bargaining Team,

We, the undersigned, write to express our concern with the growing potential for a graduate employee strike. Such a strike is disruptive both to the academic progress of our undergraduate students and to our research activities. We urge the university to settle this labor dispute before such a strike occurs.

Many of the graduate students we advise are severely rent burdened, paying more than 50% of their income towards rent. This interferes with their ability to engage fully with their work at the university due to the mental load, and often the additional employment, needed to manage their limited finances. This is a situation that will only be exacerbated by the stagnant wages proposed by the university bargaining team. We urge the university to agree to a contract that will meet graduate employees’ needs so they can focus their energy on their studies, teaching, and research.

Should the university administration fail to reach an agreement with CGE before a strike occurs, we, the undersigned faculty, recognize that forcing graduate students to strike will obstruct the educational mission of the university. Furthermore, replacing graduate employee labor with that of undergraduates or faculty is detrimental to the academic integrity of our courses, our ability to perform our other duties, our relationships with the students we advise, and our departmental climates. Re-allocating graduate labor diminishes the rigor of our courses by replacing instructors with less-qualified parties or already thinly spread faculty. It interferes with our ability to write grant proposals, oversee promotion cases, and other critical work. Should the university make efforts to replace graduate student labor, we condemn such actions. Not only for the reasons above, but also because such efforts undermine the power of graduate workers to advocate for themselves.

In conclusion, the only way for the university administration to avoid a disruption to its academic and research activities is for the administration to settle with CGE and come to an agreement that meets the needs of the graduate employees.

Signed,